The Unmarked Location
by maximsk
Summary: Early in the Fourth Era, the Nerevarine has taken to wandering the expanse of Tamriel. His time in Morrowind is past, and so are his greatest adventures—or so he believes. But even in the world's most remote and anonymous reaches, the perils of fate have a way of finding him. Even his entire lifetime's worth of skill may not be enough for the mystery that awaits.
1. Clearing the Camp

**The character of Nils belongs to (and is being used with the permission of) countess z. The story in which Nils originally appeared is titled Accidental Disciples, and is about the events of Morrowind.**

Morndas, 8:37 AM, 14th of Sun's Height, 4E 38

Unknown Cave

The bandits had built up a wooden stockade around the cave's entrance. Not that they had to, very much. It was already nestled deep in the mountainside. But they'd still jammed some pointed logs into the frozen earth, and made a crude gate and watchtower where the path went down below.

It was a well-populated camp. Fifteen bandits were out in the open, mostly visible from the bright glow of the fire at the camp's center. They had a semicircle of tents around it, to trap the heat, and a lean-to hut where they must have been keeping supplies. They all seemed very quiet. Sitting around, not doing much. Waiting.

Eighty feet up the slope, Nils watched from atop an icy ridge. The whole camp was laid out below him, like a map. The bandits had gone to great lengths to defend from the path below, and they'd assumed that no one could mount an attack from any other direction. For a group of any meaningful size, that might've been true. This mountainside wasn't just treacherous, it was impassable. There were no handholds, no routes of access. Nothing but ice-slicked bumpy rock, the whole way down.

This was going to be a little bit tricky.

Honestly, Nils didn't entirely want to be here. This was an ordeal, and it wasn't how he liked to handle his troubles. But these bandits had managed to get his attention for what they'd been up to, and for the safety of the others involved, Nils was obligated to go do something about it. Divines knew the guards had plenty of work cut out for them as it was. He'd just have to handle this on his own, and as quick as he could.

He was well-equipped enough for the job. Steel hauberk, dark gray cloak, glass sword, muffle-enchanted boots, assorted potions. And his right hand. He raised it in front of his face and flexed his fingers slowly, examining the metal sheen in the faint moonlight. He didn't like what the cold did to the mechanisms of this thing. As a half-Dunmer himself, he really preferred his weather warmer, and it seemed his hand agreed. The cold always froze the fingers up a little, made them halt and jerk ever so slightly with their motions, made his hand harder to use for its purpose. But he didn't exactly have a lot of choice. He was stuck with it.

All of that being said, a lot of people would kill to have a hand replaced with one of Kagrenac's tools. This was hardly the time to get sour about it anyway.

Down below, a couple of the bandits had started arguing over something. An Orc, and some man or other. A Nord, maybe. They were getting up in each other's faces, snarling insults, getting everyone's attention. It looked like they were about to attack each other.

Nils hefted the coil of slender rope in his left hand, and picked up the steel piton on one end with his right. He didn't need a hammer to put it in place. He simply located an appropriate fissure in the ice, and used the heel of his right hand to jam it into place. That would do.

Then he tossed down the rope, let it fall as far as it would go, and slid down after it.

It was a quick descent. He kept one hand on the rope and one hand on the rock, but he probably didn't even need that much. He was more sliding than climbing down. The camp descended into view around him. It didn't look like anyone had seen him yet.

The rope stopped about ten feet short of the level ground below. He let go, kicked off the sloped rock, and landed with a smooth, silent roll. This had put him just inside the walls of the camp. In the dark, where no one would see him.

The two bandits had started fighting by now. That was predictable. They'd squared off right in the middle of the semicircle of tents, and the bandits were all watching from the far side of the campfire as they traded blows.

Normally, this would've been a good opportunity to sneak past them all, but Nils wasn't here for that. He'd need to be a little more direct.

The first was the bandit on the watchtower. The tower itself was an open-topped thing, about ten feet up, just by the gates. Far away from everyone else. The bandit was a Redguard woman, all alone up there, with just a torch on a post to keep her company. It looked like she was holding a bow in one hand. Nils bounded silently along the inside of the wall, across the gate, and up the start of the tower's spiraling staircase. But he didn't bother to climb the whole thing. He just planted a foot on the tower's first support beam, launched himself up, and grabbed onto the railing with his right hand. Without even slowing down, he threw himself sideways up over the edge, cloak billowing around him. Just with that one arm's pull. That was all it took.

His left instep slammed into the side of the Redguard's leather helmet. Again, silently. She never had time to react. It was just enough to stagger her, long enough for Nils to complete his landing and let go of the railing. Even if his strikes were silent, this bandit wouldn't be. So before she could recover, he grabbed her by the collar with his left hand, and drove the fingertips of his right into her throat.

He felt the bandit's windpipe crush in on itself under the impact. The weight on his arm suddenly increased a whole lot. She was staring wildly at him, eyes wide with shock, her mouth open silently. Nils lowered her gently to the tower floor, and wrenched the bow out of her hand.

Then he crouched down beneath the railing, and spent a moment in thought. The fight was still going on, out there. They hadn't noticed him yet. But they had to notice _something_ , at some point. And it couldn't be him, or else he'd end up with ten bandits on him at once. He wasn't in the mood to try and deal with that.

First, he retrieved the quiver of arrows from the bandit's back, and slung it over his own shoulder. Then he picked up the torch from its post, and laid it on the floor opposite the bandit. Then, to speed things up, he lit up a fire spell in his free hand, and bathed the torch in a steady stream of flames. He kept it up just long enough for the fire to catch and start spreading, and then sprung up and jumped back over the railing.

Nils landed on the hard rocky earth on the far side of the gates, rolling smoothly over his side to absorb the impact. Even now, the bandits hadn't noticed him. And for good reason—he was silent, colored mostly the same as these rocks, and in the dark. If he continued forward, he would come up behind the semicircle of tents, which might put him in inadvertent view of everyone spectating the fight. So maybe it was best to stay here for now.

He drew an arrow from his quiver with two metallic fingers, and nocked it without looking. Just to test the draw strength, he tried aiming at the bandits and pulling back on the string. Easily manageable. He let the bow slacken again, and crept forwards slowly.

One of the bandits pointed and cried out, "Fire! There's a fire!" And he was right. The top of the tower was already blazing with a huge column of flame, even bigger than the campfire they had going. Nils could hear it crackling even from here.

All of the bandits sprung into action immediately. Meanwhile, Nils continued forwards steadily, receding back into the shadows. If he stayed around, he'd probably end up being illuminated by the burning tower's glow.

Naturally, the bandits were mostly just racing up towards the tower, to try and put it out. It wasn't even clear how they planned on doing that. One of them had the presence of mind, at least, to ready a frost spell. A few stragglers were standing back by the campfire and watching, wide-eyed, as the spectacle unfolded. Probably more interesting than those two brawlers going at it before.

Nils came up between two of the tents, still in the dark. There were three bandits still by the campfire. The rest were clamoring away over by the tower. These ones had to go first. Three bandits, three arrows. That was fine.

Once again, he drew the bowstring, taking his time lining up the arrow—and this time he let fly. His arrow hit the nearest bandit in the head. That was his carefully aimed shot done. The rest would have to be quick.

His second arrow hit the next bandit in the chest, before he could even react to the first. The third bandit got as far as drawing his sword, and then Nils put an arrow in his torso too—except that he was wearing a crude iron breastplate, and it barely even got through. The bandit just cried out and staggered back a little. Nils had to follow it up with another arrow to the face.

There was his element of surprise gone, then. He heard the clamor die down instantly. The Orc's voice shouted, "We're under attack! Spread out! Find them!"

Nils didn't bother with darkness this time. He came right out into the open, by the fire, with his bow in hand. Naturally, the remaining seven bandits charged at him all at once, drawing their weapons on the way.

He only had time for one more arrow. He used it on the one with the frost spells readied. An elf, by the looks of it. A Bosmer, maybe, in light leather armor. His arrow hit her right beneath the eye. Her spells winked out before she even fell to her knees.

Nils cast the bow aside and drew his sword. Six bandits, with the Orc coming up first, a good couple seconds ahead of the others. He was a big fellow, wearing heavy steel armor. The most expensively equipped of this group, for sure. In his hands was a great big battle-axe, Dwemer in make. He had it held back as he ran, all charged up for a huge, obvious horizontal swing.

The swing never happened. Nils darted in just as the Orc came close, and grabbed the haft of the axe in his right hand as it began to come around. The impact barely even registered against his arm. He ignored it and brought his sword down on the Orc's leather-clad hand, just below the steel bracer.

His blade cut through the whole thing in one stroke. The hand came right off its wrist in a shower of blood. The Orc began to scream, and then Nils' sword was in his throat. This was the problem with heavy armor. It offered great protection, where it covered the wearer's body. Where it didn't, it was worse than useless. It only slowed the wearer down. Made those points easier to access.

He yanked his sword free just in time to meet the next two bandits. Nords, both of them. One of them might have been the other brawler from before. They came at him from both left and right, one with a greatsword, one with a mace. Nils went for the one with the mace. The man was charging up for a swing—these weapons were all so slow! It left him wide open for a counterattack. Nils only needed one strike, a neat stab right through the man's leather armor, up under the ribcage. If he didn't hit the heart, he'd just gone through enough lung for it not to matter.

By now, the other Nord had gotten directly behind him, and begun an attack of his own. Nils saw it coming out of the corner of his eye. Another horizontal strike, just around head level, coming in from the right. It was meant to decapitate him.

He casually reached up with his right hand, like he was going to wave hello, and turned in the strike's direction. The blade met the metal ridge of his hand at full speed—and instantly stopped. He hardly felt the impact from this strike, either.

The Nord stared at him in shock. Then Nils knocked the sword away, closed his hand into a fist, and lunged and slammed it into the man's face. Bone broke under his knuckles. The man fell down on his back and didn't get up again.

More attacks were coming in. There were still three of these bandits left. Nils jumped forward and turned around in one motion, appraising his remaining attackers all at once. Three attackers remained, which meant he had to defend from three—no, four weapons. The rightmost bandit had two daggers.

To keep them from getting any closer, Nils lit up his fire spell again and sent a jet of flame out in a sweeping left-to-right arc. The bandits all jumped back at once, like they'd been physically shoved. The dagger-wielder was wearing fur armor, and its lower portion promptly caught fire. That would distract him for a second, at least.

Nils didn't wait for them to recover. He jumped in at the leftmost one, another Bosmer woman, this one with a pitted old iron sword. That was a little sad. Nils had had a sword like that, once. It hadn't been much good for anything but scaring people in the dark.

The middle bandit was approaching him from the side, with another sword. Better metal on this one, at least. He kicked her hard in the kneecap to give her something to think about while he dealt with this.

The delay meant that he ended up swinging at the Bosmer at the same time that the Bosmer swung at him. Their swords met—and Nils' glass blade clove straight through the incoming iron one. There was enough force left over to slice open the bandit's sword arm. He followed it up with a deft outward stroke along the side of the neck. It was messy, to say the least.

To her credit, the middle bandit didn't stop for long. She fell down on her knee, hissing hard through her teeth, struggling with the pain from that kick, but her eyes stayed on Nils. And just as he was finishing with the Bosmer, she lashed out at the back of his legs with the sword once again. It wasn't the strongest attack, with most of her body locked up by her kneeling pose, but it still could've hurt. Might've taken out a tendon, if it hit in the right spot.

Nils brought his own weapon down past his side to block the blow. Then, practically in the same motion, he spun around and kicked the bandit under the chin. The instep of his boot connected with lips and teeth, and went on through like they weren't even there. The bandit's body catapulted up and backward like she'd been grabbed and thrown. A thin spatter of blood trailed through the air from her mouth. Nils could already tell her neck had been broken by the impact. He didn't even wait for her to land before he shifted his attention to the remaining targets.

But actually, it was a singular target. There was one last bandit still standing. The dagger-wielder. A Dunmer, like himself. He'd just succeeded in extinguishing his armor. He looked around at all his dead peers on the ground, then at Nils, standing there perfectly uninjured with a bloodstained glass sword at his side.

Nils said, "If you yield, I won't hurt you."

"Go rot in Oblivion," the bandit spat, and lunged in at him with both daggers out.

In a way, daggers were more dangerous than bigger weapons. They were quicker to strike with, easier to maneuver with. Fights involving daggers tended to end up with a lot of bad cuts, a lot of profuse bleeding. Even for someone with healing spells at their disposal, that was potentially a real danger.

Nils didn't wait to see what this bandit was planning. He jumped straight into the lunge, his right fist outstretched. And sure enough, one of the bandit's daggers jammed hard into the wrist joint on the way. Against a living hand in a gauntlet, that would've gone right through to the skin, and probably pierced into some important things beneath.

There was no living hand in there. Nils' entire right hand and forearm were nothing but Dwemer machinery, encased inside a legendary magical artifact of the same make. He didn't even feel the dagger as his fist went on into the bandit's chest.

The fur armor absorbed the worst of the blow. But it was still more than enough to send the bandit right onto his back. Nils followed it up with a sword strike to the same spot. Just a simple downward stab, before the bandit could recover enough to respond. His glass blade went through the fur just as easily as the flesh beneath.

And just like that, the fight was over. Nils took a slow, careful look around the camp, then produced a cloth from his belt pouch, wiped his sword clean, and sheathed it once again. He might have been a little less endangered right now, but this was still a bandit camp. He didn't want to waste time.

The tents didn't seem to have anything of interest in them. Just bedrolls and bottles, by the look of it. The lean-to, meanwhile, was a little more interesting. There were a couple of barrels on their sides, and a lot of sacks full of various food items. These bandits had been raiding quite a few farms lately, going by all the different fresh produce. Nils went through it all, just for thoroughness' sake, unfastening every sack, opening every crate, checking each container's contents as best as he could manage.

The third crate he opened had no food inside. Instead, it was filled with Dwemer machinery. Assorted bits of scrap, some simple, some complex. Some were unmistakably parts of automatons.

Nils swallowed involuntarily. This had just gotten a lot more complicated. All he'd expected from that cave entrance was a mine of some sort. Maybe some old abandoned tomb or something. But there was only one reason for the bandits to have a stockpile of parts like this, and that would be if they were gathering them as loot. There had to be a Dwemer settlement nearby.

That didn't make sense. They were in the middle of the Jerall Mountains, due southwest of Falkreath. The nearest Dwemer ruin was Arkngthamz, and that was in a different hold of Skyrim. There was supposed to be nothing here.

There was only one thing to do at this point. Slowly, keeping his sword drawn, Nils started walking in the direction of the cave entrance.

The entrance was a narrow, crooked passage, just barely wide enough to walk through without brushing his arms on the walls. The bandits had put a few torches in here, high up above head level so they wouldn't get in the way. Nils walked along over solid gray rock lit up with dim shadowy orange. The noise of the campfire receded behind him. Soon, it was just him and these cramped cave walls.

He held onto his sword tightly. This was one cave like hundreds of others. He'd been in quite a few at this point. But he didn't know what to expect ahead, and in his experience, that often had a less than happy ending.

After half a minute or so of walking, there was a short, steep slope down to a wider, more spacious chamber. Nils hopped down with his sword on guard, ready to take on whatever was down here … and found no enemies. The chamber was about the size of a small indoor room, with a few more torches around the corners. And to his total lack of surprise, there was also a great big Dwemer double door set in the far wall, made of their signature metal, set in a carved stone frame. Besides that, the only thing in here was a blue bundle of cloth, piled up on the floor by the doorframe's left side.

Then the bundle of cloth moved, and made a low, groaning noise. Nils jolted suddenly. This was a person. How had he not realized that?

The person was an elf. An Altmer male, going by height and build. The blue cloth was the elf's robes. They concealed his body well enough that it took Nils a moment to realize that the elf's hands and feet were restrained by rope bonds. His face was swollen and bloodied, and his slow, labored movements suggested additional, unseen injuries.

Upon seeing Nils standing there, the elf made an inarticulate noise of shock, his eyes widening suddenly. He started to shuffle backward on the ground, putting himself up against the wall.

"It's all right," Nils said, holding up his empty right hand in a staying gesture. "I'm not going to hurt you. I've taken care of the bandits outside."

"W…" The Altmer's voice came as a thin, reedy rasp. "Pardon me, sir… do you have any water?"

"Oh! Yes, of course." Immediately, Nils unslung his backpack and retrieved his waterskin, then knelt in front of the elf to help administer its contents. After a few seconds of that, he stopped to use his sword to cut the elf's bonds. In hindsight, he probably should have done that first, but he didn't quite care right then.

"Thank you," the Altmer said, in a much more normal voice, before lighting up a restoration aura in both hands and casting a healing spell on himself. The open wounds on his face immediately sealed themselves and vanished from sight, leaving only some accumulated dried blood in their place. The elf used a splash of water from the skin, then some judicious wiping from his sleeves, to get rid of that.

Nils asked, "What's your name?"

The Altmer blinked a couple times, frowning at nothing in particular, before looking back at Nils and answering.

"My name is Sinderion. What's yours?"


	2. Untouched by Outsiders

The two of them stared at one another for a few seconds. There was barely any sound in this cave. All Nils heard was the faint, distant crackle of the campfire outside. But as he stopped and listened, he also detected something else. A tiny, barely audible constant noise. It felt familiar somehow.

And going by what he had found in that box outside, he didn't have to guess what it was. He was sure he'd be hearing more of it soon.

Still, Sinderion had asked him for his name. This wasn't the time to get distracted.

"Nils Valericus," he said, before pointing with his right hand at the great metal doors beside them. "I don't suppose you know what's behind there?"

"No, I'm sorry," Sinderion shook his head slowly. "Well, there's a small corridor, but it's essentially empty. The next set of doors is jammed shut. These bandits seemed to think I could help. When I couldn't, they left me here, apparently expecting me to somehow change my mind on the matter."

Nils hadn't come here to explore a ruin. But now that he was here, and having this described to him, his curiosity was beginning to mount. This wouldn't be the first Dwemer ruin he'd explored, and he doubted it would be the scariest. He gave the doors another glance. "Are you an archaeologist, Sinderion?"

"Alchemist, actually. I have some knowledge of the Dwemer and their workings, but not enough for this place. Certainly not enough for those bandits."

"Any idea what this ruin is called?"

Sinderion shook his head again. "The bandits certainly had no idea. We may be looking at an essentially untouched ruin, at least in recent times. Rare enough of an occasion, isn't it?"

"You know…" Nils chuckled under his breath. "I have some friends who would be absolutely livid at the notion of some scavenging bandits having first pick of a pristine Dwemer archaeology site. Hopefully, we can do better."

The Altmer's eyebrows went up. "You want to look inside?"

"What, don't you?"

"Well… I suppose it would be an opportunity to learn. But it will inevitably be risky. Few places are more dangerous than a Dwemer ruin."

"Uh huh." Nils walked over to the doors and swung them open.

Sure enough, on the other side was a short corridor of Dwemer stonework. Two bright white lamps were mounted on the walls, one to either side, right at the corridor's midpoint. A few bits of metal scrap were scattered around on the floor, no doubt leftovers from the bandits' pickings. And at the far end was another pair of doors, covered in scratches and dents but still closed tight.

Nils stepped inside cautiously. This corridor looked heavily weathered and crumbled, but it was still a stark contrast to the natural cave before it. And going by the lights, at least some of its machinery was still functional.

Behind him, Sinderion trailed in and followed at a distance. "No one's been able to get through those doors," he said. "It's not that they're locked. They're simply stuck in place."

"Uh huh," Nils said again. He walked up to the next pair of doors and gave them a cursory examination. Judging by the scrapes right along the crack between the two doors, someone had tried to pry them open, to no avail. And judging by the dents on either side, someone had tried breaking them down with some sort of hammer or such, with the same result.

Sinderion asked, "What exactly are you planning on—"

He responded by slamming his right fist into the doors. The impact traveled up his arm and nearly made him stagger back, but his solid metal knuckles left a sizable dent in the left edge of the right door. This would work. He gave it a couple more punches of the same strength, until the edge had deformed inwards enough to let him work his fingers through the gap. At that point, he braced one foot against the right door, and pulled.

There was an ear-splitting groan as the metal bent and deformed further. Nils couldn't believe how much this thing was resisting him. He gritted his teeth, took a breath, redoubled his efforts—eventually, he was able to work his left hand in too, and began pulling with both arms—and put every ounce of strength he had into forcing these doors open.

Needless to say, that was no small amount of strength. Eventually, the bottom third of the doors had bent so far out of shape—the left one forwards, the right one backwards—that he could probably crawl his way through. He let go and staggered back from the doors, panting heavily. Every muscle in his body was burning from that. His heart was pounding, his skin was sweaty… he couldn't believe how hard he'd had to work for this. But it had worked. There was a gap in the doors, and he could see the floor ahead through it. The tiles on the far side were much neater-looking, and just as well-lit.

"By the Nine," Sinderion murmured from behind him. "How did you do that?"

Nils dabbed some sweat from his forehead with his left sleeve, then cast a brief healing spell on himself to stave off the worst of the pain. "Well, first I punched the door a few times, then I pulled it open a bit."

"Uhm…"

"Strength." He held up his right hand and gave the fingers a flex. "Let's just say there's some ancient magic involved. The less I try and explain it beyond that, the better."

"That's a very poor excuse, you know," Sinderion said irritably.

"What if I told you I lost my right hand and some of my musculature to the decay of Corprus, and had to have them replaced with much stronger non-living artifices?"

A couple seconds went by. No reply.

Nils exhaled sharply in amusement. "That's what I thought."

The gap he'd pulled open was big enough to crawl through, but only barely. He had to unsling his pack and push it through first, then squeeze in after it. Fortunately, nothing seemed to be waiting to ambush him on the far side. It was simply more corridor, running a short distance before taking a sharp descent out of sight. The air in here was warmer than before, and a touch more humid. And in kind, there was that faint, distant hum in the air, which set Nils' nerves rather at ease when he recognized it—that was the sound of Dwemer machinery running. In his experience, the most dangerous Dwemer ruins of all were ones where the ambient machines were all dead.

He pushed himself back to his feet slowly, slinging his pack on once more on the way. It looked like the doors had been secured with a massively thick sliding series of metal bars, in an X shape radiating from the center and securing into the walls. The portion of the doors Nils had bent out of shape was all in the X's bottom triangle. There was a sturdy metal wheel in the middle to move all the bars at once, but it had forcibly bent back against the door and jammed in place.

This all explained quite a bit. Including why Nils hadn't been able to simply tear the doors off their hinges. He usually could do that.

Sinderion wriggled his way in after him, and joined his side in due order. He looked back at the doors for a second, and then shook his head. "Seems the Dwemer really didn't want any visitors. This doesn't bode well if we need to make a quick escape."

In response, Nils grabbed onto the bent wheel segment with his right hand, and pulled hard. He almost expected it to break clean off, but it just bent back instead. And he only had to bend it an inch or so outward before it was usable again. Once it was, he gave the wheel an experimental clockwise turn, and then another, and another, until he could open both doors with their proper handles. It looked like the wheel was attached to the right door, and moving the bars had allowed it to separate from the left. Sort of interesting. But still, the first corridor was right there before them, and the cave entrance beyond that.

"Well, that works, then," Sinderion said quietly.

Nils just smiled and walked on to the descending ramp.

It was a fairly long passage downward, running down between a few pairs of pillars to a much lower level. A few thick metal pipes ran along the edges of the ceiling, terminating at points where they merged into the walls. A few others protruded straight out from the walls at chest height, ending almost immediately with hinged hatches. Nothing too out of the ordinary here.

Predictably, as Nils began his descent, the nearest hatch swung open, and a Dwemer spider worker popped out and landed on the floor. This was the most common type of automaton the Dwemer had used. It was an ornate but rugged metal contraption, bout the size of a hunting dog, but lower and wider, and with quite a few more limbs. The forelimbs, in particular, ended with fearsome pincers, as useful for cleaving through flesh as repairing machinery. A gyroscopic array on the machine's back housed its guidance and cognitive centers, doubtlessly complete with a soul gem buried somewhere in there. The array was lit up with a field of shock magic, which was a little unusual, but not intolerable.

In any case, this spider worker was about to try to kill him, so there wasn't much time to study it in any real detail.

The instant it landed on the ground, the automaton started scuttling along the sloped floor towards the two intruders. When it got within six feet or so of Nils, it jumped up suddenly, lunging at him with limbs outstretched. It was fast, much faster than something so thick and heavy ought to have been. If it managed to strike him, his armor might not have been enough.

He met the spider midair with a ferocious punch from his right fist. There was a huge, crunching slam of metal breaking against metal… as the spider's casing caved in under his impact, sending its parts flying every which way.

And as they did, the spider's gyro array exploded in a shower of lightning. Nils was hit by it head-on. Some of it stung his arm and torso, and some of it went straight into his right hand.

As the metal components fell to the floor, Nils winced in discomfort and examined his hand. The joints weren't responding. He wasn't feeling anything but an eerie, numb tingling through the whole device. This happened a lot when it got hit by shock magic. It was actually rather like an automaton itself, this way. There wasn't much to do but wait.

"That was impressive," Sinderion murmured from behind him.

"Not quite impressive enough," Nils replied. He cast another healing spell on himself while he waited. Then, after perhaps ten seconds or so, he got impatient, gave his arm a forceful swing to put some feeling back in it, and continued down the ramp.

Up behind him, Sinderion asked, "I have a question for you. If it's all right to ask. Um…"

"Go ahead," Nils said, keeping his eyes on the remaining hatches.

"What's your race? You look like you're half-Dunmer, but I don't want to assume about the rest."

Even though the Altmer couldn't see it, Nils still raised an eyebrow. "Half-Dunmer, half-Imperial. My last name didn't do it for you?"

"… Didn't want to assume," Sinderion mumbled.

"Or the hair?" Like many Dunmer, Nils' hair was all black, but like many Imperials, it was also very wavy. Since it went down nearly to his shoulders, there was plenty of opportunity for people to see that.

In any case, Sinderion didn't reply.

About three-quarters of the way down, another hatch opened, and a spider jumped out and started scuttling on towards Nils. Like the last one, it had a visible field of shock magic in its gyro assembly. And like the last one, it jumped straight at him without a moment wasted.

Nils ducked aside as the spider launched up, grabbed its legs in his right hand, swung it past himself, and hurled it into the wall. It hit with the top of its frame, crashing loudly before dropping to the floor in a metallic mess. The gyro assembly had crumpled in on itself. And the stone slab of the wall was cracked where it'd been struck.

The spider was still trying to come back to him, so he walked over and plunged his sword into its top. Now the explosion of shock magic came. He held his right hand well out of the way for it, and silently endured the painful shower of lightning on his left side instead.

Sinderion was gaping silently at him. Nothing new there.

Nils continued down the ramp without a word. On the way, he swapped hands briefly for his sword so he could cast a healing spell. That shock had left him tingling and aching all over, even with his various resistances. It took a good few seconds of casting for the sensations to all subside.

At the bottom, the corridor continued straight ahead, with three large doors on the right wall, and a sizable assembly of gears and pistons on the left. It wasn't clear what exactly they were there for, but they were definitely all running. Upon closer examination, the farthest set of doors looked to be already ajar, which was odd. Typically, these were always kept closed. Beyond all the doors, the corridor turned left, and continued out of sight.

He stopped long enough for Sinderion to catch up with him, and then said, "Stay close. We'll take these one at a time."

The Altmer frowned uncomfortably. "Are you sure? It really seems wiser to let you take these automatons on as you do. I would likely only get in the way."

"Maybe, but if I leave you alone, you might get targeted by some automatons yourself. Just stay with me. You'll be fine."

The first pair of doors opened up without any trouble. No locks on this one. No locks. That word was bouncing around inside Nils' head. _Locks._ Something always annoyed him about having to deal with those. Maybe it was because having Wraithguard for a hand made it impossible to effectively pick them.

Then again, Wraithguard basically was a giant lockpick. He had such a great time opening things with it.

The room on the far side of these doors was very spacious, with a high ceiling and distant walls. It was pretty much entirely filled with rows and rows of metal shelves, from floor to ceiling, anchored between both with thick metal posts. The shelves actually had ladders against them, which he'd never seen before. The ladders were even attached to sliding rails at the top, to let them move easily from end to end.

"Impressive," Sinderion said.

"Mmm." Nils nodded absently and began walking around the perimeter of the room. As per usual in Dwemer ruins, the shelves were full of assorted scrap. Pieces of disconnected machinery, big decorative struts, stacks and stacks of metal ingots, assorted chests and boxes. He wasn't terribly interested in trying to open any of them right then.

If nothing else, he was busy watching for automatons. Those things had a nasty habit of attacking when people were busy.

Sinderion followed him the whole way around. The shelves didn't display anything new or unusual from the different angles. No surprise there. This was obviously just a standard storage room. More surprising, though, was the total lack of automatons. None on the floor, none in the walls. Their only company was the noise of the machinery running all through the ruin.

Once they made the full trip back to the doors, Sinderion said, "I've never seen a Dwemer storehouse of this size. I didn't even realize that they built them this large."

"Well, anything's possible," Nils shrugged. "This room is secure, and that's what matters. Let's keep going."

He shut the doors after them as they exited. Mainly, that was so that if any automatons went in there while they weren't looking, they'd have a fair warning. Even though automatons could easily open doors, they weren't exactly great about closing them afterward.

The next pair of doors was a fair bit of walking ahead. Nils approached them at a brisk striding pace. Then he stopped in front of them and looked to his Altmer companion, eyebrows raised. It was a nonverbal question: Are you ready for this one? After a couple seconds, he got a silent, reluctant nod of confirmation in response. Good enough.

Then as he opened the doors, his Altmer companion threw on a layer of mage armor. That was better.

This room was completely unlike the last. It was a perfectly cubical chamber, completely crammed full of pipes all around the walls, crossing through the air at all different heights, all around a big grated block of machinery in the middle. Not good. The visibility in here was even worse than in the last room. Nils raised his sword as he entered.

Which turned out to be a good idea, because the moment he walked in, an automaton popped out of the wall right behind him.

This one was a Dwemer sphere. It was an actual literal sphere of metal plates when it started, about the diameter of a storage barrel's thickest portion. It rolled down a wide vertical track from its iris hatch on the wall, and when it reached the floor, its pretense of being a sphere promptly vanished. The plates unfolded into an eerily person-shaped and person-sized machine, complete with a half-masked vague elongated likeness of a face. It was equipped with a sword and a crossbow in place of hands, and rolling on two sphere-segment wheels in place of feet.

And yet it still had two legs. Nils didn't understand Dwemer design priorities sometimes.

The sphere was already just a few feet away from him. There was no need to spend time on the approach. The very moment the sphere began to unfold, Nils was already upon it, bringing his sword down hard in both hands, right on the sphere's crossbow arm. At this angle, his blade wasn't quite able to shear through the hardened metal of the crossbow's body, but it did sever the metal cable that served as the bowstring. One weapon down, one to go.

Now it was the sphere's turn. The instant it had risen to its full height, it lunged in with its sword, making a driving upward strike, to stab beneath Nils' ribcage. The strike came from a mile away. It was pretty much effortless to counter. Nils responded with an outward parry, deflecting the blade out past his left side. The sphere ended its lunge right in front of his face.

Nils' right hand came up before he was even done with his parry. There wasn't much to it. He grabbed the inner strut of the sphere's sword-bearing forearm, where it connected to the elbow, and then yanked back with his whole torso. The entire strut tore away in a big metal tangle, leaving the elbow connected on only one side. Just the continuing pressure from his sword was enough to make the whole lower arm fall off. It landed on the floor very unceremoniously.

Both weapons were gone. The sphere stood in place, moving its arms uselessly, apparently unsure of what to do next. Nils helpfully supplied the answer by twisting back around and delivering a forceful stab up under the sphere's metal chest—the exact same strike that the sphere had attempted on him. His blade drove through the upper chest joint beneath, and jammed into some sensitive machinery inside. The sphere immediately went limp, and fell sideways off his sword, landing on the ground in a one-armed heap.

Suddenly, a lightning spell discharged behind him. The sound was instantly recognizable. Out of where reflex, Nils whirled around sword-first—only to find Sinderion standing ready with a shock spell aura in both hands, and another sphere over by the left wall of the room.

"Watch out," Nils said. "Those crossbows can shoot through just about anything."

"I _know_ that," Sinderion snapped. As if on cue, the sphere aimed its crossbow at him, and he jumped aside in an evasive move. His timing was surprisingly good. The metal-tipped bolt went right through the air where he'd been a quarter-second ago.

In that time, Nils had already run half the distance to the sphere. It never had time to reload its crossbow. It tried to use its sword instead, and Nils was ready for that. He darted right in right beneath its lunging strike, raising his hand and deflecting the metal blade up over his shoulder. As he came back up behind, he slid his hand down the weapon's length, and grabbed onto the sphere's forearm.

From there, it only took one strike. With his right hand, he jerked outward, yanking the whole sphere along with it. And with his left hand, he gave his sword a vicious chop into the sphere's single little column of a waist.

The glass edge wasn't quite enough to cut the thing in half. But it bit so deeply into the metal, rupturing every internal structure on the way, that it didn't even matter. He wrenched his blade back out with a forceful shove. The sphere hit the ground at a bizarre, twisted angle.

Then he looked around for a moment, let out a quiet sigh, and walked on back towards Sinderion. "I'm not sure there's much of note in this room," he said. "It's obviously keeping this place running, but that's not saying much."

The Altmer dismissed his lightning spell and lowered his hands slowly. "So, uh… Has anyone ever told you that you're actually a bit terrifying?"

"No, it's never happened," Nils said flatly.

"You do seem to have a talent for destroying these things, though. Is that fair to say? Is that… because you haven't really been injured by them yet, even. Most people would have ended up dead from the first spider alone."

While Sinderion talked, Nils was walking around the perimeter of the room, just as he'd done for the last one. Fortunately, he wasn't seeing any more hatches for automatons. But it was important to be thorough. And naturally, Sinderion quickly took the hint and started following along.

As expected, there wasn't much to see. All of this machinery was still functional, still making its constant noise. They were back outside in less than a minute.

Once they were out, Nils replied, "It takes practice to handle Dwemer automatons. They don't fight like people do, and they're not vulnerable like people are. But once you know how to fight one of a type of automaton, you know how to fight them all. They don't exactly have a varied technique."

"All you have to do is get that first bit of practice in," Sinderion remarked.

"Exactly."

The third pair of doors seemed to be stuck just barely ajar. As Nils came closer, it quickly became apparent why—the door latch was broken. Both doors' inner edges were covered in semicircular dents, as though made with a hammer.

 _Locks._ That word was coming back to him again. In this case, the lock clearly hadn't been enough.

Already, it was obvious that something here had gone amiss. But there was nothing to do but proceed. He held his sword up on guard, prepared himself in a ready stance, then stepped forward and kicked the doors open.

Everything in this room was in disarray. It might have been some kind of living space, once. Nils saw about a dozen stone shelves along the walls like the Dwemer used for beds, and there was a long table down the middle of the room. But beyond that, it was all wrecked. There were pieces of metal scrap all over the place. A spider worker's broken remains were strewn over the floor in front of him. Towards the back of the room, another pair of doors was hanging open, with more metallic items visible beyond.

Nils stepped inside slowly, carefully. This was bizarre. Everything before now had been in pristine condition, and this one room had been broken into and wrecked at some point. He wasn't sure what he was looking at.

Until he started to get a better look at the scrap metal scattered over the floor. It wasn't just scrap. In fact, barely any of it was. Nearly all of it consisted of complete, functional weapons and armor.

And then it hit him.

There had been Dwemer here, once. And they had jammed the entrance door shut. None of them had ever unjammed it, not until Nils and Sinderion had come along just tonight. But the Dwemer hadn't done it to lock people out. They'd done it to lock people _in_.

Nothing had gone wrong with the machinery. No external force had invaded them. For some reason, some insane reason, everyone here had slain each other.

"This is… different," Sinderion said quietly.

Nils didn't reply. He simply did the same thing as always, and began on a slow, careful walk around the perimeter of the room.

The floor in here truly was a mess. He had to struggle not to accidentally step in any of the debris. Only, it wasn't really debris, exactly. The Dwemer who'd lived here had been lavishly equipped with weapons and armor. More than that, it was all much smoother and more articulate than he was used to seeing from them. There were no visible rivets, no awkward struts. If someone had been wearing the armor, they would have looked equal parts elegant and fearsome.

That line of thought went on until he saw a helmet on the ground with an arrow stuck through the eyehole. The corresponding breastplate was only a foot or so away.

This wasn't answering anything. His mind was abuzz with possible explanations—political power struggles, Daedric meddling, frenzy poison accident, mind-affecting disease?—and he wasn't sure what to think of any of them. There was nothing to do but to keep looking.

The door at the back of the room seemed to lead to a washroom area. There was a single dagger sitting there in the middle of the otherwise-empty floor. Nils moved on quickly.

No more automatons came out at him in this room. He didn't even see any hatches for any of them. This must have been a safe space, once. No automatons, no experiments, just the security of peaceful living. Then everyone had put on their armor, picked up their weapons, and attacked each other until no survivors were left.

By the time he walked back out, Nils had given up on trying to think of anything. It just wasn't working. He wasn't exactly in disbelief of what he was seeing, but… everything felt a little unreal anyway. This was all much, much too big for him.

Probably, if he had any sense, he'd take this opportunity to head back up the way he came, and try to forget he'd ever seen this place. Something had happened here. And if he wasn't careful, it might happen to Sinderion and himself. At the very least, if he were to insist on exploring this place at some point, he might like to have someone with more knowledge of what to expect. Anything else would be a tremendous risk.

After all, it wasn't like he ever tried to deal with risky things in his life. That would be _so_ unlike him.

Behind him, Sinderion asked, "What are we going to do now?"

Nils turned around and looked at the Altmer over his shoulder. A few seconds passed without any words spoken. Then he shrugged.

"Go deeper in, of course."


	3. The Dark Threshold

Fortunately, Sinderion didn't argue. Nils led him out of the wrecked living quarters, and onward to the rest of the ruin. With all three doors in this corridor cleared, there was nowhere to go but ahead.

The corridor continued around a left turn, then a short ramp downwards, then a right turn to a segment with a grated floor and machinery running underneath. Then there was another pair of doors, which opened up to the next big room. Thankfully, nothing attacked them on the way.

This room looked like some sort of general workspace, with stone tables and shelves set up along the left and right walls, and a big open floor in the middle. There was a staircase running up the back wall, from left to right, leading to a balcony above. And directly beneath it was another pair of double doors. The whole thing was lit up by a row of hanging ceiling lights in ornate metal frames, in addition to the usual along the walls.

It occurred to Nils that this entire place so far had been impressively well-lit. Usually, Dwemer ruins had at least one area that was dim or shadowy or at least in a little bit of disrepair. But not here. This ruin was pristine. There could've been people working here yesterday, for how clean it all was.

Except there hadn't been. No one had even set foot in here for centuries. The actual workers had made sure of that.

"I have no idea what this room is," Sinderion said blankly.

"Well, let's keep going," Nils replied. He still had his sword out, though it was down by his side now. "I'm going to check the balcony, then we can go through the doors."

"I'll… stay here, then."

"Suit yourself." He left the Altmer standing there in the middle of the room. Which was fine, because there weren't any automaton ports visible on the walls. Presumably, he could avoid getting himself killed for thirty seconds while Nils looked up here.

As he climbed the staircase, he found himself rather expecting a spider worker to jump out at him as soon as he got to the top. But that didn't happen. There was nothing up here but a whole big tangle of pipes and pistons and gears. It wasn't even clear if they were powering anything, but he took the time to walk amid them all anyway.

Halfway across the balcony, directly above the door beneath, there was a small cylindrical column on the floor before the railing. A single bright cyan-topped button was on top. Nils pressed it obligingly, and heard a metallic sliding noise beneath his feet.

"It's open," Sinderion called up. He was just standing there in the middle of the room, waiting expectantly. It'd probably been less than thirty seconds, too.

Nils waved and nodded then started back towards the staircase. _That_ was when the spider worker popped out and attacked him.

Honestly, he wasn't even sure where it came from. It must've been from farther down the row of machinery. But by the time he heard it coming, it was already jumping up at him from behind. He did the only thing he could think of, and ducked.

The spider ended up bouncing off his shoulder. Nils felt the weight of the automaton hit him, the pointed claws and legs scraping and scrabbling over his hauberk, as his downward motion carried him onto his left hand. The spider tumbled the rest of the way off of him, and landed legs-first on the floor in front of his face.

For a fraction of a second, Nils and the spider were just staring at each other. His sword was pinned to the ground by his own left hand. And the spider's pincers were already up. In another fraction of a second, it could have those pincers right in his eyes. This wasn't really the best position to start a fight in.

Not helping matters was that this one had a shock aura in its gyro, just like the last two. Nils was not in the mood to get hit by that thing again.

He ended up blocking the spider's second jump with his right hand. There was no real strike to it, he just let the thing collide with his open palm, and let its pincers try to bite into the enchanted metal. Then he grabbed onto the front of the thing and slammed it down into the floor.

If he'd wanted to, he probably could've just kept smashing this thing into the floor until it broke apart. But he wasn't in the mood to get hit with all that lightning again, so instead he spun back onto his feet and hurled the spider straight down over the edge of the balcony. It landed sideways on the floor below with a satisfying crunch.

As Nils headed for the stairs back down, he called out, "Hey, Sinderion, take care of that, would you?"

He was answered by the sound of a fire spell discharging. Sinderion was clearly aware of what to do about this.

By the time he got back to the bottom, the spider had burst apart in its characteristic shower of lightning, right in the middle of the floor, nowhere near anyone. Sinderion was all the way back by the entrance doors. And there was nothing left of the spider itself but a scattered blackened metal wreck. That was satisfactory.

And the exit doorway was open. There was another short corridor beyond, with another left turn to some unseen area.

"Good job," Nils called out, before beckoning for Sinderion to follow. "Let's keep going, the way's open."

The Altmer rejoined him after a few seconds. He seemed to be a little short on breath. "You put a great deal of faith just now in my command of destruction magic," he said, not unhappily.

Nils smiled. "You seem talented enough, especially for a self-described alchemist. I don't suppose you put that to use in combat very often."

"No, but I do believe I can see the appeal. Let's, uh… Let's proceed now, yes?"

"Well, there's certainly nothing stopping us."

The left turn in the corridor led to another pair of double doors. Nils readied his sword, as he had done previously, and used his right hand to push the doors open. At this point, he imagined, he wouldn't be surprised by anything he found on the other side.

And that turned out to be squarely wrong.

The room on the other side was a long, continuous space, like a far larger version of a corridor segment. The floor was lit up with two long rows of lights on waist-high stone columns, running just by the left and right walls, maybe a dozen or so for each. The ceiling was vaulted high above, and the left and right walls were spaced far apart. Around halfway down the room, there were two pairs of doors on these walls, one solid, one grated. And at the far end of the room, at the destination of this long space, was a single, massive circle of Dwemer metal.

Nils stepped inside slowly. He didn't understand entirely what he was looking at. The circle seemed to be set directly into the wall, its lowest point flush with the floor. It was something like thirty feet in diameter, and adorned not with the typical designs of Dwemer metalwork, but what seemed like an eight-spoked wheel of smooth metal bars, running from a raised metal hub to a reinforced rim where the circle met the stone wall around it.

This was a door. Quite possibly, it was the single largest door that Nils had seen in his life.

Then, the instant after that realization hit him, Sinderion asked what he had been about to think. "Why would they have a door down here that's even bigger than the _front_ door?"

He didn't have an answer. He didn't want to, either.

Most of this room was entirely empty. No pipes, no gears. The noise of the machinery seemed to be mainly behind them now. But as Nils advanced through the room, he could see that this place wasn't quite devoid of contents. That grated door didn't have a whole room behind it. It was just a protective container for something within. Something large, and made of the same metal as all the other crafts here. He should have predicted this one.

Unfortunately, he realized just what he was dealing with the instant before it came to life. The grated doors swung open on their own. And once again, he was treated to a sudden surprise.

Nils had seen Dwemer centurions before. They followed a simple, predictable formula of limbs and struts and plating and weaponry. And they were just about the ideal automaton for the tenets of Dwemer design, being largely like a person in shape, and about twice as tall for size. This centurion… wasn't like those. It was unmistakable in its size, shape and stature—but its design was very different. Its casing was articulated and many-jointed and smooth-surfaced. And in place of the usual weapons for hands, it had actual articulated metal _hands_ for hands. They simply happened to be carrying a gigantic hammer and a gigantic axe.

It was a truly impressive sight. It was also detaching from within its metal docking arch and stepping forward into the room. With every footfall, a huge, metallic thud reverberated through the floor. Right now, it was a little over thirty feet away from Nils, but that was about to change very quickly.

As it approached, Nils noticed that the centurion had a perfectly person-like face. All centurions did, but in this case, it was mounted on something resembling an actual neck and shoulders. If he hadn't known better, he honestly could've mistaken this thing for an actual—if oversized and exaggerated—person in heavy Dwemer armor.

"Let's go back," Sinderion said urgently, tugging on Nils' elbow in case he didn't get the point. "We can deal with this from a distance."

"No. These things are even more dangerous when they can't just try and hit you. Trust me." Nils held up his right hand in a reassuring gesture—probably made more reassuring by that hand being the big imposing metal one—and then returned his attention to the centurion. This was going to be interesting.

Once a person had fought even a single automaton, they'd fought all the automatons of that type. But this centurion was so obviously unlike any other, Nils was fairly certain he was back to the starting point. Still, that didn't change that this thing would relentlessly pursue them until—

His thoughts were interrupted by the centurion breaking into an all-out running charge straight at him. The thudding instantly turned to ear-splitting metallic booming. Nothing of that size should have been able to move that quickly. But there it was, doing it right before his eyes.

Sinderion promptly scurried off towards the entrance of the room.

Nils, for his part, just sighed and gave his sword an idle warm-up twirl. The centurion would be on top of him in about three seconds. That was when the fun would begin.

The centurion's opening move was an outward, head-height swing with the axe in its right hand. At the same time, Nils leapt down and rolled on his shoulder, right beneath the thing's right arm, past its side. He heard the axe rush through the air where he'd been a split second before. Both of them had just gone right by the other without even touching.

Already, this was new. The limbs of a centurion weren't supposed to be flexible enough to make horizontal strikes. This thing had seemingly the range of motion of an actual person. It was also still probably powerful enough to crush Nils flat in a single blow, so he got back on his feet just as quickly as he'd gone off them.

He had to admit, he was a little nervous right now. But he could think about that later.

The centurion had run straight past him. Now it stopped and turned nimbly around on a gigantic heel, before approaching again at a more measured pace. Its first surprise strike hadn't worked. Now it was settling in for a protracted fight. This was exactly how a person would have acted. It was unsettling to see.

But maybe Nils could put that to the test.

He didn't wait for it to attack. Right before it would've gotten within weapon's reach, he lunged in with an upward stab of his sword, right at the overlapping plates of the centurion's torso. He figured maybe he could wedge the blade in there, maybe break something underneath. But the centurion jumped backwards suddenly, leaving the blade to just barely touch its armor, and replied with a fast jab with the butt of its axe.

That was predictable. Nils was already moving back to evade the blow. It went through the air without ever touching him. But he wasn't watching the axe. He was watching the hammer. The centurion had just tried to disorient him with a quick strike, and now it was going to follow up with a much more lethal one.

And sure enough, the centurion was bringing its hammer back for a huge overhead blow. Nils saw it coming nearly a whole second in advance. The centurion stepped forward with its left foot, putting its momentum into the motion, and brought its hammer right down upon him. All he had to do was twist away to the side, and the huge metal head of the weapon smashed into the stone floor before his feet.

The centurion had just overextended itself. Now it was Nils' turn to reply.

Whoever had given this thing actual functioning hands, they must have done it with some purpose in mind. And more likely than not, they were thickly armored enough to ignore a blow from any ordinary weapon. But Nils wasn't armed with an ordinary weapon. He closed his right hand into a fist, then with every ounce of strength he could put into it, threw a single, massive punch right into the centurion's left thumb.

The thumb's thin metal joints crumpled and cracked under his knuckles. It was left hanging loosely from its socket. And before the centurion could even react, Nils had grabbed onto the damaged appendage, and twisted it away with all the same strength as before. He ended up tearing the thing right off.

Without even bothering to look, Nils ducked downwards suddenly. The centurion's axe swung through the air above his head an instant later. He'd just known. As he righted himself, he withdrew to a short distance away, before the centurion could attack him again.

But its options were suddenly limited. It raised its left hand to try to bring its hammer up, and the metal haft fell out from its fingers. The weapon clattered loudly on the cracked stone it'd struck just seconds before. People couldn't hold things in their hands without working thumbs. It was just as true for this automaton.

That was one weapon down. Now Nils just had to worry about the axe.

The centurion wasted no time in resuming the combat. It closed in with two huge thudding steps, and made a driving, upward strike with the pointed tip of the axe. That was easy to dodge. Nils turned aside and lashed out with his sword at the centurion's wrist. It was probably even more vulnerable than the digits. His sword blade hit the back of its hand, and started to slide up into the protective plating of the wrist joint.

He had just enough time to see the centurion's four-fingered left fist coming in at his chest.

It hit him harder than anything had ever hit him before. For a moment, all sensation left his body, and the sights and sounds around him stopped making sense. Then the moment passed, and it all caught up with him. He couldn't breathe. His chest was so full of agony. He couldn't tell what was broken, but things had definitely broken. It felt like the front of his ribcage had been sent straight through the back.

And he was weightless. That was odd.

The floor hit his back with nearly as much force as the first impact. He skidded five, ten feet over the stone tiles, his chain hauberk scraping hard the whole way, until he eventually came to a halt. His ears were ringing, his lungs weren't answering. His throat wasn't answering. He turned his head and spat a mouthful of warm saltiness on the floor. Everything was coated in that stuff. And he still couldn't breathe.

His hands were empty. Without even thinking, he opened his left hand and started casting a healing spell. The pain immediately started to recede, thankfully. But then his thoughts began to return to him, and he realized what was going on.

The centurion was a good twenty feet away. It had punched him so hard that he'd ended up all the way over here. And it was holding his glass sword in its upturned left hand, adjusting for the missing thumb. It looked like a tiny little dagger, for this thing's size. What was it planning to do with that?

Then it laid the tip of the sword on the floor, and brought its axe blade down on it. There was an ear-splitting crack, and the two halves of his weapon fell to the ground one after another.

Nils began to push himself back up to a seated posture. He was having trouble doing anything more, even with his healing spell still going. It was a strange, not quite pleasant sensation, where he could feel his ribs knitting themselves back together inside his chest. But he needed to move, and he wasn't moving.

The centurion took a step forward and lowered its arms. It was preparing for something—Nils knew what it was preparing for. This was why he hadn't wanted to engage this thing from afar. It was even deadlier at a distance.

It was about to blast him with a jet of steam. He could see the vents on either collar, where the scalding attack was going to come from. A bitter taste rose in the back of Nils' throat, above all the saltiness. This was going to hurt.

The steam came billowing out all at once, in a massive hissing flood of near-opaque whiteness, all straight at him. It rushed over the floor, rushed through the air, filled his field of vision. And then it stopped.

There was a strange, prolonged noise behind him. Nils twisted around to see its source.

It was Sinderion. He was standing there perfectly calmly, one hand outstretched, with an orange aura glowing in his palm. He'd just halted the entire jet of steam midair.

"Keep at it," the Altmer said, before letting the spell end.

The steam dissipated instantly into the air. Nils felt a gentle humid warmth over him as it breezed on by. And just as he began to see the centurion's form again, he heard the thudding noise of its footsteps resuming. It walked into view with its axe still in hand.

That was enough healing magic. Nils pushed himself back to his feet. This fight had to end now.

He'd made a grievous mistake, letting this centurion strike him like that. He'd assumed the exact thing he'd told himself he wouldn't—that he was fighting an automaton like any other, and that he could use the same tactics as usual. A regular automaton wouldn't bother trying to use a limb whose attached weapon had been disabled. This one was intelligent enough to just use its fist instead.

He couldn't afford to make a mistake like that again. This time, as he closed in to melee range, Nils was preparing himself for anything and everything.

Accordingly, as the centurion approached him with its gigantic axe, Nils reached behind his back with his right hand, and drew another weapon from his belt.

It was just an ebony dagger. Nothing special, really. Nothing that anyone in their right mind would use against a machine like this. It was just something Nils had kept with him over the years. And it was about to make a world of difference.

The centurion started in with a quick, jabbing strike with its damaged fist. Doubtless, it planned to follow that up with a swing from its axe. But that never happened. Nils dodged to the outside of the strike, then grabbed onto the giant metal forearm with his left hand, and pulled himself straight up into the air.

It was such a fast ascent that the centurion didn't even have time to pull its arm back. Nils brought his left foot up and used it to boost off the metal surface as he went, and felt it drop away from beneath him in the process. Already, it was trying to step away from him, to put some distance between them for a renewed attack. But it was far too late for that. He lunged forwards, grabbed onto the automaton's collar just above the steam vents, and vaulted sideways over its shoulder.

And on the way, he turned midair and slid the blade of his ebony dagger into the gap between the plates of the centurion's back and neck.

He didn't need a sharp blade right now. He only needed a sturdy lever.

There was a loud, sharp, percussive noise of popping metal from inside the centurion's torso. As Nils swung around and braced his feet against the centurion's back, he felt the plating give and fall outward by an inch or so. That was good enough. He flipped the dagger sideways in his hand, grabbed onto the edge of the plate with his metal fingertips, put his left hand on the back of the thing's shoulder, and pulled with all of his might.

In the same instant, the centurion jumped backwards and tipped itself over. Nils didn't get to see whether he'd pulled enough first. He had to let go and jump off now—he couldn't even tell in what direction—and try to hit the ground at a good angle, before this machine hit the floor with him underneath.

Nils ended up landing flat on his belly. An instant later, he heard and felt a huge, crashing crumbling impact behind him as the centurion landed on its back. And then a moment after that, a huge, thick, gently curved plate of Dwemer metal slid across the floor and stopped right next to him. He could see the bent and broken attachment points on its concave upper face. That was nice. It'd all happened so quickly, he hadn't even been able to tell if it had worked.

But the fight was still on, so he pulled himself up onto his feet, and turned around to face his opponent yet again. And the very moment he laid eyes on it, he realized that he needed to correct himself. No, the fight wasn't on now. The fight was very much over and done with.

The centurion was completely motionless. Its arms were out to either side, the axe loosely resting in its right hand. Its legs were flat on the floor, still extended from the jump a moment ago. Its head was tilted back, no longer able to hold up its own weight. And its torso was suspended a few inches above the floor. Nils could see the base of one of the waist-high lamp-bearing stone columns underneath. If it'd been producing light before, it wasn't anymore.

His dagger was probably still somewhere in there. For some reason, he didn't want to try retrieving it right then.

Some amount of time must have passed without him noticing, because seemingly out of nowhere, Sinderion appeared at his side and asked, "Are you all right?"

"I think so," Nils nodded absently. He cast a brief healing spell on himself just to be sure. "That was… I hope we don't have to fight any more of these. Those were my only blades."

"Plenty more lamp posts to go, though," the Altmer said mildly.

Nils nodded again. He still wasn't entirely paying attention. "Yes, I'll… I'll honor and remember this lamp's sacrifice forever. Uh… Right. Mind if we go back and get some more things?"

And by that he meant a replacement weapon. He backtracked through the corridors at a brisk walking pace, all the way back to the living quarters, where he'd seen all the weapons and armor strewn about. It felt nothing short of disturbing to be picking through the remains of a fight like this one, but necessity was what it was, and he quickly settled on a one-handed war axe from beside one of the empty assortments of armor.

Only then could they resume their expedition properly. Nils re-entered the final room, and was greeted with the sight of the ruined centurion, still flat and motionless on its back. And beyond it was the gigantic circular door on the room's far end, just waiting for him to reach it. But he wasn't going to pay attention to it just yet. He hadn't quite finished with the rest of this room.

There were two other obvious things for them to look at—the doors the centurion had emerged from, and the doors opposite them. Nils headed over to investigate, one doorway after the other. Even from a distance, it was clear that there wasn't much to see from the first. The space on the other side was only large enough for the centurion's docking arch, where it had lain dormant until its very recent activation. There was about a yard of clearance around all sides of the arch, presumably to allow engineers to work on the automaton while it was in here, but beyond that was nothing but stone walls.

The other doorway, however, was obviously meant to go someplace. Nils opened it with his new weapon up and ready. But it was immediately obvious that there was nothing to fight. There was a fairly short corridor on the other side, which was mostly filled with broken stone rubble, spilling out from a pair of grated doors at the far end. The unobstructed floor space only extended about ten feet in.

He knew what this was. And it made sense. Or at least, it made as much sense as the barred door up at the top entrance. This was the same idea.

Sinderion came up by him and said, "Well, that's certainly new. This place has been quite low on rubble. What do you suppose happened here?"

"This was a Dwemer lift shaft," Nils said. And he could say that without even a trace of uncertainty. "They must've caved it in themselves, before the fighting started. The corresponding exit on the surface is probably long gone as well."

"That is quite the… thing," Sinderion mumbled. It was hard to blame him for being at a loss right now. Nils had seen plenty of vertical shafts like this in Dwemer ruins before. They were immensely sturdy things, to the point where they routinely outlasted the very machinery they were meant to contain. To cave one in entirely would have been a spectacularly difficult task.

But there was nothing to do but leave the corridor and return to the main room. There was that one final matter to deal with. The one that had been staring at them since the moment they had arrived in here.

Nils walked out and approached the last door at a firmly controlled pace. If he didn't watch himself, he'd probably end up stopping in place and just staring at this thing. Even now, he couldn't take his eyes off it. He wasn't even sure whether to call something so large a door at all. It might have been better described as a _gate_. And yet here it was, entirely indoors, right in the middle of the room's far wall. It was just waiting to be opened.

As he approached, the door towered ever higher above him. He tried to ignore the sheer size of the thing, and keep himself focused. There had to be a way to open it up. Even if the Dwemer had wanted this entire place sealed off, it couldn't have been designed without an opening mechanism, or else they wouldn't have bothered with the door at all. Yet it took him nearly the entire walk across the rest of the room to figure out what it operated on.

There were two metal panels on the wall, one to either side of the door. They were at around chest height, and not even particularly big. Much like the door itself, they were more reinforced than decorated, and they were securely in place. And even from a distance, Nils could see that each one had a button on it. A cyan-dot button, like the one he'd pressed earlier. No covers, no locks, just these two panels and these two buttons, and the entire door in between.

"Well, it's definitely good I have you with me, Sinderion," he said. "Or else we'd have to stop here."

There was no reply.

Nils looked over his shoulder. The Altmer was standing a good thirty feet back, just staring at the door with his jaw agape. Time to try again.

"Hey! Sinderion! Come here, I need you for this."

That seemed to do the trick. Sinderion snapped out of his reverie, and hurried right on over and asked, "What is it?"

"Take a look at those buttons." Nils pointed to them, one after the other, as he spoke. "I'm not seeing any locks on here. Just those. And I'm guessing they'll need to be pushed at the same time for this door to open."

"Makes sense," Sinderion nodded, before pausing and turning towards the door hesitantly. "Ah… Just to clarify… You are sure you want to do this, then? Open this?"

Nils shrugged. "Well, we're exploring this place, right? We'd better see it through." But then he paused as well. That wasn't really his answer. It wasn't nearly that was all on his mind.

He gave himself a few seconds to think it over. It didn't need any more time than that.

"So… we know the Dwemer here locked themselves in, and then all killed each other. And while most of the automatons have been normal enough, the Dwemer's own armor and weapons are completely different. And so was that centurion just now. I think they were doing something here. Working by some new set of rules. And there's no way that that's not connected to whatever's behind this door. We'd better find out what it is, before someone else comes along and decides to do the same."

Sinderion gazed at him silently for the whole thing. Then a few seconds went by where neither of them were talking. The hooded elf looked down at the floor for a moment, and looked back up with a sigh. "All right. Let's do it. I'll take the… left one, then."

The two of them parted and walked over to either side of the door without a word. Nils kept his left hand tightly on his new axe the whole time. There was one more thing that he could've said, but he hadn't, mainly for the sake of his companion's nerves.

And ironically, the one thing he'd withheld was the answer to Sinderion's very first question when they'd come in. Why would they have a door down here that was even bigger than the front door? It wasn't as though the second layer of security were that direly important. If it were, they would have fortified the front door just as immensely.

It was in the exact same fashion as the bent wheel on the front door, and the collapsed lift shaft. This great beast of a door wasn't designed to keep anything out. It was designed to keep something in. And if they weren't the ones to open it, someone else would be.

"On three," he said, not entirely feeling aware of his own voice. "One, two, three—"

He pressed the button with his right thumb, just as Sinderion made a similar motion. There was a firm metallic _click-click_ as it depressed and released.

For a moment, nothing happened. Nils opened his mouth to ask if Sinderion hadn't done it on the right time.

A loud, deep, grinding rumble cut him off. It was coming from inside the walls, inside the doors, the sound of gigantic machinery engaging and starting to move. And as he watched, the eight metal spokes holding the door in place each slid inwards, one by one, withdrawing just enough into the hub to disengage from the rim. Then, with a massive, mounting hiss of hidden steam-powered mechanisms, the entire metal surface of the door shifted backward out of its frame, baring the inside of its great circular frame, complete with visible holes where the spokes had gone in.

And then, after a half-second's pause, the door began to rise up. Nils left the panel and walked slowly towards the middle of the circular entryway.

He wasn't sure entirely what was on the other side. But the moment the door had risen enough for him to see past it, he recognized one thing instantly—the space on the other side was pitch black.


	4. Beyond the Dead End

**Well, now that I've completed The Shadow Unending, I can finally complete this too. Enjoy!**

Nils stepped over the threshold first. He doubted he'd ever stepped through such a massive doorway in his life. But he moved on all the same, into the sheer darkness of the corridor ahead.

Already, this felt different. The air was cool, and still, and a bit dry. And for an underground chamber that had been sealed off from the outside world for hundreds of years, it wasn't particularly stale. Nils wasn't sure whether to feel assured or unnerved by that. It gave him the feeling of a particularly well-kept secret vault.

He switched hands for his axe, putting it in his non-spellcasting metal hand, then let off a candlelight spell as he walked forward. The stark white light illuminated enough space around him that he wouldn't trip over anything, but little more. All it showed him properly was the stone floor beneath his feet, with faint distant views of the walls and ceiling. This corridor must have been twenty feet wide, and about as tall. Practically the same size as the room he'd just been in.

Behind him, Sinderion's voice asked, "Are you sure about this?"

Nils spared only the briefest glance over his shoulder. The Altmer was still standing there at the middle of the huge circular doorway, peering uncomfortably in at him.

"Yes, I'm sure," he said, as he turned back around to continue surveying the corridor. If he got attacked by something ahead while he was looking backward, he would never forgive himself.

But the space ahead did seem to be empty, and quite silent, at that. Nils proceeded forward slowly. Sinderion joined him in short order, casting a candlelight spell of his own on the way. Neither of them spoke.

Then a realization hit him. It _was_ silent in here, wasn't it? The noise of the Dwemer machinery was receding behind them. Whatever devices lay ahead, none of them were running.

The last time Nils had been in a Dwemer ruin whose machinery no longer worked, he had found a disaster waiting for him instead. He didn't appreciate the reminder now.

Two golden shapes on the walls slowly emerged into view. Doors, big broad double doors, across from one another, heading off to other rooms. Nils and Sinderion exchanged a glance.

"Hold on a moment," Sinderion muttered, before readying another light aura.

This time, it was a proper magelight spell. The glowing orb traveled steadily down the corridor in a perfectly straight line, illuminating a bright white ring of space around it on the way. There was another pair of doors a short distance down, then a junction with another corridor to the right, then a barred door at the far end of the room. The whole space was dotted with grated lamps on the walls, as with the previous areas of the ruin, but these were all dark.

Nils swallowed involuntarily. Something was waiting for them in here. And all they had to do was figure out where.

First, he renewed his candlelight spell. Then he went for the first door on the right, and reached for its handle. The Dwemer metal was cool to the touch. And to his surprise, when he pulled on it, it turned smoothly and disengaged the latch.

He held his axe up on guard, and pushed open the door carefully. It didn't even creak on the hinges. It was perfect.

The room on the other side was full of machinery. It was square, maybe. A square-shaped room, with a high ceiling. It was full of machinery, and Nils didn't recognize any of it. Intricate arrays of gears lay underneath protective grates, built into boxy freestanding machines connected by rails and pipes. In this light, it all threw bizarre, unreal shadows on the far walls of the room.

None of the machinery was functioning. Nils could see what looked like controls here and there, with buttons and levers and the like, but they weren't doing anything.

He held back a shudder as he turned away from the room. Sinderion was standing in the corridor, waiting for him. He couldn't quite tell in this light, but the Altmer's face seemed to be a bit pale.

"Don't worry," Nils said, in the steadiest tone he could manage. "None of the machinery here is functional. There's nothing that can hurt us."

"Whatever you say," Sinderion replied numbly.

Nils closed the doors behind him, and proceeded to the ones across the corridor. Again, the handle turned smoothly, and again, he was greeted by a silent dark room. And once again, he had no idea what he was looking at. The room was roughly the same dimensions as the last one, but the only object in it was a central, tiered pedestal, about waist-high, made of intricate plates and struts of Dwemer metal. It was surrounded by four overarching spires of metal, one towards each corner of the room, all curved to point downward at whatever would go on the pedestal's top surface. The surface was empty.

He sighed under his breath and closed the doors again. This was teaching him so little. It was going to drive him mad, seeing all these machines whose purpose was a complete mystery. But there was nothing he could do. He suspected that even if he were the world's most knowledgeable scholar of all things Dwemer, he still would have failed to identify the things in this part of the ruin.

Sinderion asked quietly, "What do you think?"

"I think there aren't any automatons down here," Nils replied. "I haven't seen any ports for them on the walls. This area must have been for living Dwemer only."

The next pair of doorways yielded the same result. Each time, he opened the doors, and found a room containing machinery he didn't understand. One had its walls completely covered in spindly jointed metal arms for green glass lenses, all laid flatly horizontal in a resting position. The other had a giant wheel-like device in the middle of the floor, surrounded by pipes and valves and tanks. That was all Nils could say about them.

But as he approached the end of the corridor, he quickly realized what was ahead. To the right was another, more spacious-looking path to somewhere else, but directly ahead was a barred doorway to a single, small chamber. The bars threw massive shadows all over the inside walls, shifting over each other from Nils' and Sinderion's light sources, but even that didn't matter. He knew what this was.

It was a Dwemer lift. There was very clearly a metal lever sitting on the middle of the chamber's floor. Nearby on the outside wall was a single metal button, presumably to open the doors. Nils went over and very cautiously tried pressing it with his thumb. The metal clicked under his touch, but nothing else happened. The switch wasn't working.

"I wonder where this goes," Sinderion murmured. "I'm not sure if we're at the bottom or the top."

That was a valid point, Nils thought. He couldn't even answer it himself.

Instead, he renewed his candlelight spell once again, and turned back to head down the intersecting corridor. Part of him was starting to wonder just how large this section of the ruin was. At first, he'd thought this to be akin to a vault, but… for all he knew, those previous rooms had been nothing more than an elaborate antechamber.

Without being told to, Sinderion cast another ball of magelight down the corridor. It didn't reveal any doors this time. Instead, there was a section of corridor up ahead that was missing its left wall. There was a great open gap instead, with a low metal railing along the bottom.

A balcony. Nils didn't know what to make of this. He broke into a brisk striding pace to see where it went.

There was nothing visible over the balcony's edge. It was complete pitch darkness for as far as he could see. And it looked like the balcony itself continued on for quite some distance ahead. Whatever it was overlooking, the space must have been huge.

"Sinderion," he said. "Could you try casting your magelight out over this?"

The Altmer said nothing. His eyes were wide in awe. But all the same, he tossed another orb of magelight out over the railing. The glowing orb traveled out and shrank slowly into the distance, on and on for some agonizingly long seconds… before winking out into nothing, without ever touching any surface. It hadn't illuminated a single thing the entire time.

Nils sighed slowly as he resumed walking. "Well, I suppose the lift back there goes down."

The balcony went on for an incredible distance. Nils had to renew his candlelight spell twice. Fitting, he supposed, for something overlooking a space too large for magelight to illuminate. But eventually, the left wall resumed, met from the outside by a large, slightly slanted stone surface. Strangely, it looked like it was actually smoothed and shaped. Nils understood deep-underground spaces like this one to generally just be natural caverns.

But still, the corridor resumed, and a short distance ahead was another pair of doors. Nils opened them with the same caution as always—and, as always, they didn't offer him any resistance. If it weren't for the total darkness, this place would've felt completely ready to use.

On the other side was a long, wide, vaulted hall, whose space was mainly filled with a giant, domed metal shape. Sinderion threw another magelight orb ahead, and it revealed that the metal was actually a cylinder, half-imbedded in the ground, running parallel to the hall's length. It was like a watchtower laid on its side. A long series of radial pipes connected it to the ceiling and walls at regular intervals.

Sinderion asked, "Is this a steam boiler?"

"Maybe," Nils shrugged. "Let's look around."

They took the hall in a counterclockwise pass around the perimeter, beneath the array of pipes. The lowest ones were connecting to the walls about ten feet up. If this was a steam boiler, it was absolutely gigantic. But the metal plating of the cylinder itself was betraying nothing. Its surface was perfectly smooth.

After a few rows of pipes, Nils reached the back wall. And here was another whole array of machinery. A dense block of gears and pipes, the size and general shape of a dining table, with a whole row of levers above it on the wall. The levers all had labels above them, written on metal rectangles in Dwemer lettering. And they were all pointing upward, except for the one at the far left. That one was downward.

"I can't read Dwemer," Sinderion said.

Nils chuckled softly. "Me neither. I hadn't really been planning to explore a Dwemer ruin today. Might've brought a relevant scholar along if I had."

"Do you suppose we should try activating these?"

"We seem to be at a dead end, so, yes." Actually, the real reasoning for Nils' answer was that he didn't want to give himself time to think it over. If he did, he might have run out of nerve, right here and now.

So without any further ado, he walked up to the leftmost lever, and gave it an upward pull.

The lights in the room flickered to life.

Nils looked around slowly. Just with that one activation, everything was starting up. The table of gears in front of him had begun to turn. All along the length of the now brightly lit room, the pipes were groaning lowly with the motion of hydraulic controls. And in the background, the ceaseless noise of Dwemer machinery was beginning all through the ruin.

"You know what this means," Sinderion murmured. His face was almost one of awe. It looked a bit more like one of sheer wide-eyed fright.

"Yes," Nils nodded. "I do."

He wasted no more time in leaving the room. The doors were open, and the corridor outside was also lit up. It was empty, but it was lit brightly. Nils could appreciate now just how long it ran. The far end's wall was so distant, he could hide it behind his thumb at arm's length.

Honestly, this could have been far worse. He'd half expected the whole ruin to start throwing automatons at them as soon as it reactivated. But there just weren't any down here. All in all, it seemed to be decently safe.

But it wasn't just the corridor that was lit up. The open space beyond the balcony was lit up too. And even from here, he could tell that the space was largely empty. There must have been something in it somewhere. Nils proceeded at a striding pace.

Then he came out far enough to see what was out there. He saw it, and screamed.

He was looking at a giant metal face.

The space beyond the balcony was absolutely vast. It was an open, vertical chamber of shaped stone, with a dome above covered in a spiderweb of huge pipes, and a sheer vertical pit below, with a floor so distant that it practically wasn't even there. The whole thing was dotted with a multitude—hundreds, maybe thousands—of metal-framed white lights, shining brightly from all angles. And the chamber had exactly one thing inside. One single, gigantic thing.

Its shape was hard to tell, at first glance. It was so covered in metal scaffolding all over. But Nils didn't have to guess. He was looking at the skeletal, partially-built form of a Dwemer automaton—one that was the size of a city.

He sank slowly to his knees, and stared in silent horror. In this instant, everything finally made perfect sense.

This was why the ruin had never been marked on a map. It was why it had all been sealed away—and, with a twisting jolt of horror, he realized something more. This was why the Dwemer in this place had killed each other. They had begun work on a weapon so powerful that they had ended up fighting to the death to control it.

Behind him, Sinderion's voice asked quietly, "Did you… did you just scream?"

Good question. He supposed he had. That face had been quite the startle. But his thoughts were all in total chaos. He wasn't sure what to say.

The Altmer waited for a couple seconds, then asked, "Is this Numidium?"

Nils pushed himself back up to his feet. Even with this much less chagrining question, he was still struggling for words. He wanted to talk, but… nothing was coming out. His heart was pounding his temples were throbbing, he couldn't think. What had they just found?

"I thought Numidium vanished," the Altmer added.

"… It did," Nils nodded slowly. At least he could say that much. He glanced over his shoulder at the mer by his side. They exchanged a brief look. This whole thing was sickening. It was so horrifying that it was making Nils physically sick. "They must have decided to build another."

"Underground? How did they plan to use it?"

"I… I don't know, I think they could've. They, uh, they probably would've just teleported this thing out, once they finished making it."

"Except they didn't. They never finished."

"Yes, and good for us," Nils said. And right as those words came out of his mouth, the realization hit him anew. He'd thought of the Dwemer all wrong. Right from the beginning, he'd been wrong about them.

The Dwemer hadn't been fighting to control this weapon. If they had, they wouldn't have deactivated the machinery down here, or jammed shut the ruin's front doors, or collapsed the lift shaft. That didn't add up. No one would have won from doing that.

Some of them, some of the Dwemer that had once lived here, had decided to stop the completion of their own creation. They had sacrificed themselves to spare the world from the wrath they would have unleashed on it.

It must have been such a terrible choice for them to make. Now more than ever, Nils knew that he was looking upon the ending of a forgotten story. He couldn't imagine the sheer amount of effort to have gone into this place, for it to have come so far in total secret.

And just the same, he couldn't imagine how much destruction this automaton would have wreaked. The first Numidium had been used by Tiber Septim to subjugate every single province in Tamriel, creating his own Empire in the process. One in the hands of the Dwemer would have ushered in an even crueler future than that.

Sinderion asked, "What do you think we should do?"

"We should get out of here," Nils said instantly. He was beginning to slow down, collect himself, gather his thoughts. It wasn't easy, with the world's greatest weapon in the making in front of him. Of course, he had to remind himself, he'd seen worse in his time. Not by much, but he had. "I'm going to turn this machinery back off, and we're going to leave."

"Really? I… don't you think this…" The Altmer was fumbling for words. Maybe he didn't know what he was trying to say either. "You wanted to go in here. Now you want to leave? Shouldn't we be trying to do something with what we've found?"

"There's only one thing this—" Nils gestured to the colossal machine before them— "can ever do. And even the Dwemer didn't want to see it in action. They died to keep this place a secret. We should at least honor their wish. Gods know they had good reasons for it."

"Well, yes, but…"

Nils turned and looked silently at Sinderion. A few seconds passed in silence.

"I have such a multitude of questions right now," the Altmer said. He was struggling to keep his eyes on Nils. The automaton was right there beyond him. "We're looking at the single greatest discovery of Dwemer archaeology in… well, ever! Do you realize how much we could change the world with this? Not even by using the weapon itself. Simply studying it and using the principles from its design—to say nothing of whatever was going to power it. There's so much we could learn. This is incredible. This is… this isn't simply a once-in-a-lifetime matter. This is once-in-a-civilization. Do you intend to throw it away?"

What a good question. Nils already knew what his answer was going to be. He chose his words carefully all the same.

"We're going to leave this place behind. And neither of us will ever speak a word about it again. Not a word, not to anyone, not for anything. I know I won't." As he spoke, he took a step forward, and pointed his finger right at Sinderion's chest. "And if this place ever comes to light again, if I ever hear the slightest _whisper_ of its existence, I'll know it came from you. And not even this would-be Numidium will protect you then."

Sinderion stared at him, wide-eyed, for another long moment. Then he sighed and shook his head. "Well, I can't argue with you. You're the one with Wraithguard for a hand."

"That's right," Nils said primly, as he started walking back down the corridor. "Follow close. Now is no time for us to get separated."

The long room at the far end was just like they'd left it. Nils knew what he needed to do. He strode through to the very back, where the row of levers was. Then, after a moment's thought, he tossed aside the axe he'd picked up earlier, and cast a candlelight spell.

Sinderion watched him silently. That was fine. At least he wasn't arguing.

With his metal hand, Nils pulled the leftmost lever back down. The lights instantly went out, and the sounds of machinery began to slow to a halt.

Then, for good measure, he braced his free hand on the wall, and ripped the lever out of its socket. It came out with a loud, messy noise of metal cracking apart.

"Right, you're still strong," Sinderion mumbled. "Forgot about that."

Nils ignored him and sauntered back out through the darkness. When he reached the balcony this time, he threw the broken lever handle over the edge. He never heard it land.

The rest of the exit took place in total silence. There just wasn't anything to say. When they reached the big doorway and re-entered the illuminated portion of the ruin, Nils pressed one of the buttons, and the massive metal door very slowly returned itself into place, sealing the ruin beyond once again.

He then proceeded to smash both of the buttons with his fist, for good measure. It took a few punches for each. Sinderion just stood by and tried not to wince.

From there, it was simple to get back to the surface. It wasn't even a very long walk. They went past the ruined centurion, and out into the room with the low balcony, and through the upward corridors filled with the remains of Dwemer spiders. They even went past the room where all of the Dwemer had killed each other. Neither of them said a word.

Soon enough, they were walking right back out the last two doorways—the one whose latch had been forced shut, and the one that led to the natural cave beyond. Nils had been starting to wonder if he would ever breathe fresh air again. But here they were, alive and safe. The cold of the night was a welcome feeling now.

As they headed out the narrow passage to the outside, Sinderion asked, "What are you going to do now?"

"Stay here for a while," Nils said. "The bandits had a few Dwemer artifacts, I'll probably put those back inside the ruin. Then, uh… figure out a way to collapse this cave entrance, I suppose. Can't be too hard, it's not that big."

"Collapsing a stone tunnel can take entire weeks of digging," Sinderion said.

"Then I'll spend weeks digging. It has to be done. This place was unmarked for a reason. It'll stay that way, for the rest of all Time."

Outside, the camp was just as Nils had remembered. The ground was littered with the bodies of all the bandits that he'd fought through, lying in pools of now-frozen blood. The campfire was still burning, but only barely. And the sky above was dark with clouds.

Sinderion gasped when he saw the bodies. "Oh. Oh, that's how that looks. All right."

Nils walked out into the middle of the camp, then sighed and shook his head. "You know, I was sort of hoping that the sun would be coming up by now. It would've felt a lot more symbolic."

A minute passed in quiet contemplation. Nils picked up one of the bandits' steel swords from the ground, and tried fitting it in the scabbard for his now-sundered glass one. It was a bit loose, but he imagined it would do to defend himself till he could find a better replacement.

As though he needed a sword at all, with his right hand being what it was. … As though any weapon mattered, when he'd just seen one that was powerful enough to render all others entirely pointless.

Then he went over to the bandits' storage hut, intending to move their box of Dwemer trinkets inside the cave. But Sinderion was already there, a fur haversack in hand, filling it up with various supplies.

"That was quite the expedition just now," Nils said, as casually as he could manage.

"Let's not talk about it," Sinderion said tersely. "Really, if it's all the same to you, I'll be on my way now. I was traveling into Skyrim when I was captured. I'm sure I'll find something else to study, up there."

Traveling into Skyrim. Nils thought that over for a moment. He had been planning on going back to Cyrodiil, himself. More likely than not, he would never cross paths with this elf again. "You want to travel at night?"

Sinderion shrugged. "I'll manage. Falkreath isn't far away."

There wasn't much to say to that. Not much to think, either. This was it for the two of them. Nils smiled softly. "In that case, good luck to you, Sinderion. It was my pleasure to have met you."

With that, he walked up to Sinderion, and held out his left hand. The Altmer met it with a brief shake, then nodded and turned for the gates.

That left Nils standing by himself in the middle of the camp, surrounded by the bodies of the bandits he'd slain. And to think, he'd come here intending only to deal with these miscreants. He hadn't even known there was anything else to look for. The threat of world-ending crises just never seemed to leave him alone.

Ultimately, he supposed, this was just another day's work. He simply had one more secret to carry with him. For such a terrible brush with fate, that was a small price to pay.

 **The End**


End file.
